
GopyrightK«jZL^S£ 



COPYRIGHT Dq|H)Srr. 



RANDOM NOTES 

OF 

BOSTON 



BY 

HENRY P. DOWST 



DRAWINGS BY 

JOHN ALBERT SEAFORD 



BOSTON 

H. B. HUMPHREY COMPANY 

MDCCCCXIII 



7i 






•X>7i 



COPYRIGHT 1913 

H. B. HUMPHREY COMPANY 

BOSTON 







Associated Banks, Trust Companies, 
and Bankers of Boston 

present this book 
as a souvenir of the 

Thirty-ninth Annual Convention 

of the 

American Bankers Association 

It is offered in loyalty and affection for our city, and 
in the hope that it may convey to you something of 
Boston, her people, her traditions and her associations. 
Please feel that bound inseparably within its covers 
is a little of ourselves, with full measure of good 
wishes, in remembrance of your visit to Boston. 

October 
Nineteen hundred thirteen 




RANDOM NOTES 
OF BOSTON 

PREFACE 



A famous illustrator of cities, obsessed perhaps 
by the splendors of an older world, not long 
ago denied Boston any title to the picturesque. 

The illustrator of this book comes pleasantly to 
the rescue with tangible evidence, here laid before 
all who care to consider it, in the form of drawings 
made with a keen appreciation, not alone of form 
and line, but of the atmosphere of his subject. 

These pictures are true because they delineate 
things in groups and relations, not with the mechan- 
ical precision of photography, but in their aspect as 
impressed upon the human retina. Our brains are 
happily schooled to make allowances for and to 
modify mathematical distortions of perspective, and 

11 



Random Notes of Boston 

to minimize the intrusion of awkward or inconsistent 
details. The artist has aptly caught this subtle and 
charitable psychology of viewpoint, and so has given 
us pictures of Boston as it looks. He has sensed the 
charm of the city, and has been able so to do because 
he loves Boston as it is, not grieving too much for 
what it might have been or ought to be. 

It was never intended to make this random com- 
ment in any degree complete or comprehensive. 
Many subjects are left out because they seem not to 
lend themselves happily to artistic portrayal, and 
still others are omitted which, while highly available 
for pictorial purposes, have been repeatedly illustrated 
or for which no adequate space could be provided 
here. 

The desire is to suggest something of the Boston 
spirit by a limited amount of text and a group of 
random sketches in keeping with it. As a guide to 
Boston the book would be quite useless; as an intro- 
duction to Boston in its more intimate aspects, it 
will perhaps serve its purpose agreeably and accept- 
ably. 



RANDOM NOTES 
OF BOSTON 



ABOUT COPLEY SQUARE 

U^OR the purposes of this book, the center of 
Boston may logically be located at Copley 
square, which is no part of Old Boston, since it is 
"made land," where in early times the tide-flooded 
flats of the Back Bay lay drear and forbidding. 

The early settlers picked out for their town a 
spot of earth so nearly an island that, with the 
growth in population, its dwellers must either make 
land or take to the boats; and it is upon made 
ground that practically all of Boston lying west of 
the Common as far as Roxbury and Brookline was 
built. The old Boston landmarks, the sturdy 
buildings of Colonial, Provincial, and Revolutionary 
times, are clustered upon the eastern and northern 
slope of Shawmut promontory. 

Until the death of Bishop Brooks in 1893, people 
called Trinity "Phillips Brooks's Church." A bronze 
memorial stands in his honor on the Boylston street 
side, shadowed by that far greater monument to his 

15 



Random Notes of Boston 

genius, the church which he built and loved. The 
Great Fire of 1872 destroyed old Trinity, on Sum- 
mer street, shortly after the parish called Phillips 
Brooks to be its minister. To him fell the task of 
replacing it with a new edifice, and under his leader- 
ship the work began in 1873. 

Every great institution expresses an individuality, 
whether it be a railroad, a bank, a college or a church. 
Trinity Church, in its great size, its artistic character, 
its richness, expresses Phillips Brooks. If it is a 
wonderful church to you, it becomes more wonderful 
when you realize this. According to that illuminat- 
ing chapter on its building, in the biography of 
Bishop Brooks, written by Professor A. V. G. Allen, 
Trinity is not a mere house of worship, built to shelter 
a large and wealthy congregation, but an organic 
symbol of spiritual thought, bigger and broader than 
any sect or creed, typifying the spirit and mysticism 
of Christianity and the Christian Church, as inter- 
preted by a great soul. Says Professor Allen: 

"He would take from the old order the ideas of 
solidity and grandeur of beauty, of adornment in 
form and color, which should surpass, if possible, all 
other beauty, as when the church seemed greater 
than the world, the spiritual stronger and richer than 
the temporal, and in its costly decoration symbolizing 
that wealth was most worthily employed when it 
ministered to spiritual ends." 

Trinity Church interprets Phillips Brooks's hu- 

16 



Random Notes of Boston 

manity — his recognition, not only of the demands of 
rehgion, but "of the sacredness of earth and the 
secular life" — his warm, understanding sympathy. 

Trinity was consecrated on February 9, 1877. 
On the next day, Mr. Brooks wrote to Robert Treat 
Paine, of the building committee, his friend and 
classmate, this expression: 

"I am almost appalled when I think what the 
work in this great new Church may be. I know that 
I shall have your help and prayers in the part of it 
which shall fall to me to do. Many, many happy 
years are before us, if the Lord will, and when we 
leave the great dear thing to those who come after 
us we shall be near one another, I am sure, in the 
better life." 

Upon an intellectual foundation somewhat akin 
to the spiritual bed-rock of Trinity, rests the Boston 
Public Library, an embodiment of Puritanism de 
luxe. Here is a noteworthy sentiment from the 
report of the committee, which, in 1847, was ap- 
pointed to determine the expediency of establishing 
a municipal library in Boston: 

"It will provide for those who are desirous of 
reading a better class of books than the ephemeral 
literature of the day." 

The nucleus of the collection was a gift of fifty 
volumes sent in 1841 by the city of Paris, and 
presented by the hand of Nicholas Marie Alexandre 
Vattemare, a Frenchman, who devoted many years 

18 



Random Notes of Boston 

to exploiting the idea of an international literary 
exchange. Vattemare possessed three splendid 
qualities — breadth of vision, cleverness and persist- 
ence. If he was not the father of the Boston Public 
Library he was, let us say, the "attending phy- 
sician," and a very skilful one. 

The first cash endowment for the Library was 
one thousand dollars from Mayor Bigelow, in 1850, 
who segregated it from a "testimonial" raised for 
his benefit by a grateful citizenry, in appreciation of 
heroic work during the cholera epidemic. 

Edward Everett, in offering his collection of one 
thousand volumes of public documents, said in a 
letter to Mayor Bigelow, urging a building to shelter 
the library: 

"Such an establishment would be an object of 

public favor from the outset. The people would 

regard it as their own creation and take a pride in 

its increase. Authors and publishers would feel it 

an honor to place their works on its shelves 

A building. .. aiming at nothing but convenience 

and neatness ought not to be a show place 

for strangers nor a lounge for idlers; but a quiet 

retreat for persons who desire earnestly to improve 

their minds." 

Do you think it occurred to Mr. Everett that 

anyone would ever smile at that.'^ 

Joshua Bates of London, an American by birth, 
gave fifty thousand dollars in 1853 to buy books. 

20 



Random Notes of Boston 

Other gifts followed, and the trustees opened the 
first public reading room in Mason street, in Octo- 
ber, 1853. In five and a half months, of 35,389 
volumes borrowed for home use, only one was 
damaged and one lost, in each of which cases the 
borrower cheerfully made reparation. . 

In 1855 the City started the Boylston street 
library building, which was completed by January 
1, 1858, and which, at the end of twenty years, 
proved inadequate for its purpose. 

The determination of a location and the acquisi- 
tion of the land for a new building covered a period 
of years, but in 1887 the preparation of plans was 
begun by McKim, Mead & White, and the building 
was ready for occupancy in 1895. 

Looking at the library one might fail to see the 
hallmarks of Puritanism. Its exterior outlines are 
softened by much gracious and appropriate orna- 
mentation. The great windows above relieve the 
facade of bleakness, if those in the lower row are a 
little uncompromising. Much may be said in praise 
of the sculptural decorations above the triple-arched 
entrance, in spite of early criticism by certain good 
people of Boston — and that was indeed Puritanism. 
Yet, you will admit that a little stone boy may be 
a good Puritan, even wanting his pinafore. 

Nor shall a lithe brown Bacchante flaunt her 
bronze allurements in that sacred inner court; we 
may thank the shade of John Winthrop for that! 



AVENI^FR OF TITF 'TTY. 



The Westland Avenue Entrance of the Fenway- 

BEYOND, THE DOiffi OF THE FiRST ChURCH OF ThRISt' 

Scientist. ' 



II. 



AVENUES OF THE NEW CITY. 

TN many towns, the avenues run at right angles 
with the streets, or in some way differentiate 
from them by direction or arrangement. This is not 
so in Boston, where any street may be an avenue, 
or any avenue a street, according to the whim of its 
sponsors. Thus, character in avenues, as well as in 
streets, is individual, rather than collective. Observe 
Harrison avenue, where odd Oriental foods are 
served to be eaten with chop-sticks, and the^y^H^w 
peril" is more gastronomic than economic; Hunt- 
ington avenue, from Trinity Crossing, Copley square, 
to Brookline, with more than its share of show-places; 
Commonwealth avenue and its uncommonly wealthy 
residents; and Massachusetts avenue, in apparent 
contravention of the rules of the game, crossing the 
others at right angles in its journey through Dor- 
chester, Roxbury and the Back Bay, and bridging 
the Basin to Cambridge, whence, after nosing 
about Harvard College, it disappears among the 

25 



Random Notes of Boston 

distant hills of Arlington — a well educated, broad- 
minded and cosmopolitan highway, though devious. 

Then regard Beacon, Marlboro. Newbury and 
Boylston streets, all seemly and well-conducted 
routes, which, if the term "avenue" connoted any 
distinction, should bear that euphonious title. In 
the intended meaning of the chapter head, these 
fall naturally imder the classification of avenues. 

If you were a sight -seer, Huntington avenue 
would keep you busy for a day or a month, according 
to the thoroughness of your purpose and persistence, 
by reason of the numerous notable institutions along 
the greater part of its length. Yet its name dates 
back only to 1864, five years before the great Peace 
Jubilee and Musical Festival, the vast Coliseum of 
which overlooked the avenue at its cityward end, at 
Copley square. 

The Peace Jubilee, celebrating a reunited, if not 
reconstructed country and the prevalence of national 
peace, was conceived by the late P. S. Gilmore, the 
famous band master. The Coliseum, a temporary 
structure of wood, stood where later the old Art 
Museum was built, and where today stands the 
Copley -Plaza hotel. Photographs show that the 
immense building, three hundred feet wide by five 
hundred feet long, overlooked a network of newly 
graded streets and unfilled building lots. It shel- 
tered fifty thousand persons. Ten thousand sang 
in the trained festival chorus, and a thousand 

£6 



Random Notes of Boston 

musicians composed the orchestra and bands. Pres- 
ident Grant was the most distinguished of the 
guests, and Doctor Ohver Wendell Holmes wrote a 
hymn of peace for the occasion. 

The musical program was made up largely of 
standard, classical works, and, according to the 
newspaper reports, was very beautifully rendered. 
Try to imagine ten thousand persons singing "The 
Anvil Chorus," "The Star Spangled Banner" and 
"America," each mth "Organ, Orchestra, Military 
Band, Drum Corps, Bell and Cannon Accompani- 
ment." 

Along Huntington avenue lies the "Quartier 
Latin" of Boston, a sort of expurgated Montmartre, 
a very real and red-blooded world of student life. 
Here lodge the boys and girls of the schools and 
studios. The Institute of Technology, Boston Uni- 
versity, the medical departments of Harvard and 
Tufts, the Conservatory of Music and lesser insti- 
tutions where one may study to become an artist, 
an orator, an actor, or a virtuoso, contribute a 
floating population and an agreeable atmosphere of 
youth and ambition. 

One might speak, accurately enough, of a "Uni- 
versity of Huntington avenue," with its narrow, 
asphalt campus. It owns no blanketing traditions, 
but a sunny, hopeful Bohemianism, perfectly com- 
patible with baths, barber shops and mannerly 
behavior. With the advantages of the great Library, 

28 



Random Notes of Boston 

the Art Museum, the Symphony, the Opera and 
countless freely opened doors to recitals and lectures, 
this "University" makes the educating process an 
agreeable pastime instead of a period of drudgery. 
It is characteristic of Boston that unenrolled thou- 
sands, of all ages and classes, profit by its tuition with 
delight, not only on weekdays but on Sundays as 
well. From the corner of Tremont street, along 
Boylston street and out Huntington avenue nearly 
to Brookline Village, one finds almost every second 
portal ready to swing inward to the explorer for 
truth, and though you seek theology or theosophy, 
medicine or melody, religion or relaxation, you will 
decipher "welcome," woven under foot or shining 
overhead, and someone inside who knows more about 
the subject than you do. For further particulars, 
consult the Evening Transcript's "Going on To- 
night" tabulation. 

And now consider the Symphony, an orchestra of 
master soloists, housed in a great building whose 
simple dignity and reserve within and without 
render democratic the richness of its design ; consider 
the Symphony, incomparable galaxy, playing like 
condescending angels, at the annual spring "Pops," 
and alternating Wagner and Cohan, so that no taste 
may go away unappeased. Through a thin blue 
fog of tobacco you see the distinguished conductor 
bow to a storm of applause, while waiters scurry 
among the tables, and women of gentle breeding peer 

30 



Random Notes of Boston 

down at the throng from the high balconies. 

For the regular Symphony concerts, season tickets 
for preferred sittings fetch great prices at auction, 
but the same concerts are available for those of 
moderate means who crave music of the classic sort. 
The orchestra is composed of one hundred salaried 
performers, recruited from all over the world; it 
is in fact, the largest permanent organization of its 
kind. The season of 1913-1914 will be the thirty- 
second of its history. 

Old Jed Prouty, of tender memory, used to 
recall the day when Little Eva couldn't die in 
Bucksport because the opry house was full o' hay. 
Similarly, the heroes and heroines of grand opera 
were obliged, up to the year 1909, to limit their 
activities, moribund or otherwise, to an occasional 
period of three weeks in Boston and to the inadequate 
accommodations of an ordinary theatre, or to sur- 
mount, as best they might, the acoustic difficulties 
of Mechanics Hall. But with the building of the 
new Opera House on Huntington avenue, came 
the organization of the Boston Opera Company 
and the inauguration of an annual season of 
opera by artists of recognized talent, in Italian, 
French and German. Public spirit has made 
opera in Boston possible, but music lovers have 
especially to thank Mr. Eben D. Jordan, whose gen- 
erosity, like that of Colonel Henry L. Higginson 
touching the Symphony, has smoothed the rough 

32 



III. 



BEACON HILL 

/Governor Winthrop and the Puritan found- 
ers of Boston spent their first Massachusetts 
summer, 1630, in Charlestown, where the dimate 
and the drinking water combined to cause serious 
illness and, in many cases, death. In the hot after- 
noons they used to gaze longingly across the Charles 
river at the three-peaked top of Shawmut promon- 
tory, where the Reverend William Blackstone 
made his home. He had cool drinking water from 
numerous springs that flowed mysteriously out of 
the hillsides; and there was usually a pleasant 
breeze to temper the summer heat. It occurred to 
Blackstone that the broad slopes of Shawmut offered 
promising opportunities for development, so he 
suggested something of the sort to Winthrop. 
Accordingly, in early autumn, the governor and his 
flock moved over. Winthrop eventually located at 
the point today occupied by the Old South build- 
ing. They say Mistress Winthrop went daily 

37 



Random Notes of Boston 

with her bucket to a spring a Httle farther east where 
now you find "Spring Lane," a thoroughfare that 
has maintained its ancient identity to this day, while 
the fount itself is said to flow seaward, through a sub- 
terranean channel. 

In 1633 the Town of Boston set aside for William 
Blackstone fifty acres of farm and woodland. 
Blackstone's home was in the vicinity of the present 
Louisburg square. AMiere today the dignified old 
streets on the western slope of Beacon Hill drop 
sedately down towards Charles River Basin, he 
raised apples and roses. Blackstone has been 
called the "First Inhabitant" of Boston, and some 
have referred to him as the "Hermit of Shawmut." 
Oxford bred, and in the neighborhood of thirty -five 
years old, one wonders how this shy young clergyman 
found courage to leave home and take up a solitary 
life in the wilderness, and why. He must have been 
a sort of Puritan Robinson Crusoe. 

The Winthrop party found him "monarch of all 
he surveyed," a frockless pastor, preaching tender 
sermons of friendliness to the wild creatures and 
living the simple life alone among his orchards and 
rosebushes. When the newer settlers had built 
their houses and established town government and 
a market, Blackstone used to ride over from home 
on a steer, broken to saddle, to chat with the towns- 
folk, and to do a little shopping. No doubt a pleasant 
spoken young bachelor found it easy to get a few 

38 



Random Notes of Boston 

stockings mended or a button sewed on. He was 
certainly entitled to some consideration, since he had 
been unquestioned proprietor of the seven hundred 
acres of dry land on Shawmut promontory. 

Some vision of the future growth of urban Boston 
prompted the town fathers to look twice at the 
acreage allotted to Blackstone, for within a year 
they bought all but six acres back from him for one 
hundred and fifty dollars, and reserved it as a 
"common" for pasturage, and a "training ground." 
In 1640 the town decided that no portion of it should 
ever be granted to an individual for homestead or 
garden. 

On or near the Blackstone property on West Hill, 
later lived Copley, the painter, John Phillips, first 
Mayor of Boston, John Lothrop Motley, the his- 
torian, the Reverend Doctor Channing, and the 
patriots Otis and Prescott. Much of West Hill — 
or Copley's Hill — one of the original three knolls 
that gave the height its name, Tri-mount (Tremont) 
was dug away to help extend the dry land at the 
edge of Back Bay and make possible the building of 
Charles street. 

On the eastern slope of another of the three 
peaks dwelt the Reverend John Cotton, and with 
him, for a time. Sir Henry Vane, "boy governor" 
of the Massachusetts Bay Company at twenty-four. 
Sir Henry presently went back to England, where, 
in time, he died violently from too much mixing of 

40 



Random Notes of Boston 

religion and politics. Cotton Hill, later called 
Pemberton Hill, was, like the other two peaks, 
dug away in time. 

Park street, as we know it, came in 1640 by the 
name of "Gentry" or "Sentry street," and led up 
to the third, or "Sentry Hill," which stood some 
six or seven score feet above harbor level. About 
this time the powers back home talked of lifting 
the Massachusetts Bay Company's charter, but 
when demand was made for it, shrewd John Winthrop 
fashioned sundry excuses, to wit, he had lost the 
key to his desk, or had mislaid the document, or 
some such sufficient cause of delay; and meanwhile, 
against the day when the King should send an 
armed agent to require the charter, the colonists 
set up a "beacon" on the height — a sort of mast, — 
with a great suspended kettle near the top, and 
rungs to climb it withal. Guards watched the ocean 
for the mastheads of unfriendly ships, and planned 
to kindle a fire, not under, but in the kettle, to warn 
the countryside. But so long as the beacon stood — 
certainly until 1789 — no alarm fire is recorded. 

Charles Bullfinch, architect of our present State 
House, designed a monument to replace the old 
beacon, and this was set up in 1790, and stood 
until 1811, when "somebody moved the hill." It 
ought not to have been done, but gravel was at a 
premium. On July 4, 1795, the corner stone of the 
new State House was laid with Masonic ceremonies 

42 



Random Notes of Boston 

and when the monument came down its memorial 
tablets were filed away in the State House basement. 
Later, public spirit reincarnated the monument and 
set the tablets in its base. It stands today on a spot, 
which, in everything but altitude, corresponds with 
the location of its original. 

House-lot prices languished in those early years 
on "Tri-mount. " One would hardly care to build 
on a lot while one's next neighbor industriously dug 
and hauled away his land to help fill up a Mill Pond 
or a Great Cove, until one's home stood on the verge 
of a gravelly precipice. Beacon (Sentry) Hill so long 
as it stood constituted a commanding lookout. Here 
came the people in crowds to watch Lord Percy's 
honey-combed battalions trail back over the distant 
roads into Charlestown, after ''A Day in Concord 
and Lexington/' April 19, 1775. Here a few weeks 
later, June 17, the same throng stood with strained 
and anxious eyes to note the powder-and-bayonet 
argument on Breed's Hill and the burning of Charles- 
town. In those days, too, the early " seeing-America- 
first" enthusiasts admired Massachusetts Bay from 
the foot of the beacon, and compared it with the 
well-known bay of Naples, to the great disadvantage 
of the latter. 

John Hancock, supposed by many young persons 
to be the inventor of the autograph for use in the 
manufacture of Important Documents, lived mag- 
nificently on Beacon Hill in a house built by his 

44 



Random Notes of Boston 

uncle, Thomas Hancock, in 1737, one of the earhest, 
if not the first, of the more pretentious edifices in the 
vicinity. 

It was the executive mansion from 1780 until 
1793, excepting two years, for John Hancock became 
first constitutional governor of Massachusetts. 
Efforts to preserve the old house were unavailing, 
and it was demolished, to be replaced by modern 
dwellings, after having stood considerably over a 
century. 

In the face of the development of the Back Bay 
as a select residential section, most of which has 
taken place in the last fifty years. Beacon Hill 
today retains its fine distinction, both of aspect and 
atmosphere. There is always a certain scorn among 
hill people for dwellers upon low ground. Heed the 
words of the father of Phillips Brooks, who, himself 
but recently come thither, wrote in 1868, in a letter 
to his distinguished son: 

"It is an old house and there is a good deal to do 
to it. It is one you will feel just as much at home in 
as at High street or Chauncy street. Nothing ' stuck- 
up' about it; like all our other houses, 'neat but not 
gaudy; not like the houses on the Back Bay, where 
the people go out in the morning to find the door- 
steps have sunk out of sight; but it is on the solid 
hardpan of Beacon Hill, original soil; street named 
from the old John Hancock." 



IV. 



THE OLD CITY. 

Several of Governor Winthrop's followers 
were residents of the old town of Boston, Eng- 
land, and John Cotton, minister of the First Church 
of Christ, in New England, had been vicar of St. 
Botolph's church at home. The new settlement on 
Shawmut promontory was named "Boston" by 
official decision on September 7, 1630. There was 
comfort in that, a sort of anchoring finality, whereby 
the colonists could assure themselves that, at last, 
they had gotten somewhere. 

Winthrop had his first Boston home set up by 
the path to the waterside from which grew King 
(now State) street, but subsequently occupied a dwell- 
ing on a lot at the present corner of Washington 
and Milk streets. Beside it was reared the Old 
South Meeting House. The "Great Spring" boiled 
from the ground a few steps to the east. All the 
dwellings were primitively rough. The governor 
rebuked one of his neighbors who, for the sake of 

49 



Random Notes of Boston 

warmth, lined his living-room with a sheathing of 
plank, in the form of a wainscot. It savored of 
waste, and sinful pride. The roofs were thatched, 
very likely with the tough, rank grass or rushes from 
the salt marshes, and the chimneys were of logs, laid 
crosswise, and chinked with clay. Later a saw-mill 
was built on Mill Creek, which connected the Mill 
Pond with Town Cove, and, as were the grist mills, 
was actuated by the current of the tide-water. The 
promontory was not heavily timbered, so most of 
the lumber must have been floated over from the 
mainland. 

The first volume of town records, so far as we 
know, was started in September, 1634, in a hand said 
to be Winthrop's. These records were destroyed 
or so badly mutilated that no authentic vital statis- 
tics of that early period are available. At the end 
of seventy years the population of Boston did not 
exceed seven thousand souls. There were disas- 
trous fires, the first in 1654, which wiped out whole 
groups of dwellings. That of 1678 destroyed eighty 
houses, and other property, to the value of £200,000. 
Afterwards, more heed was given the possibility of 
fires, but brick and stone construction did not 
become general for many years. 

The development of the town followed a line 
north and south, represented, approximately, by the 
present Washington street. Naturally, too, the 
settlement clung close to the harbor lip, for in so 

50 



The Old City 

islanded a location the citizens must depend largely 
upon maritime traffic for the necessaries as well as 
for the amenities of life. Communication with 
Roxbury and the South Shore lay over Boston Neck, 
a tenuous filament of terra firma, with the stress on 
the terror, presumably, since persons are known 
to have perished in trying to follow its treacherous 
length. Near what is now Dover street, the towns- 
men set up a rough fortification in view of possible 
Indian attack. No such assault ever occurred. 
From this point northward to the present corner 
of Boylston street the "Highway to Roxbury," now 
Washington street, was named Orange stj-eet; thence 
to the head of Summer, it was called Newbery; the 
section from Summer to School was Marlborough; 
and Corn Hill took up the burden at that point 
and carried it to the foot of the Cornhill of today, 
which was then Market street, so-called because it 
led to the market district about the Town Dock. 

From a ten-story building in Pemberton square, 
as high as the old Pemberton Hill the location of 
which it marks, you can look off across a considerable 
portion of the old city. Pocketed by towering 
office buildings you see the little Town House, since 
called the Old State House, holding the head of 
King (now State) street. There was the market 
stead, to be replaced by the first Town House, 1657, 
built by private subscription supplementing a legacy 
of Captain Robert Keayne, who lived on the corner 

53 



Random Notes of Boston 

of King street and Old Corn Hill, just south of it. 
Captain Keayne commanded the Honorable Artillery 
Company, today Ancient as well as Honorable, the 
earliest of our citizen-soldiery. In front of the old 
Town House you may drink at the city's expense 
from an automatic fountain; but do not seek a 
relationship between it and the Town Pump that 
stood near this point in Colonial times. Fire de- 
stroyed the first Town House, which was of wood; 
and the second, a brick building on the same site, 
was erected in 1713, to be burned in 1747, with 
many of its priceless records. The town rebuilt it 
on the ruins of the old structure, a substantial part 
of the walls of which had remained in place. Here, 
at different times, both town and state governments 
held meetings. The city government used Faneuil 
Hall for many years, and from 1830 to 1840 met 
in the Old State House. 

A portion of the North End appears in the view 
from the top of the Boston Globe building, looking 
north along Washington street. Again you have 
a ghmpse of the Old State House. \Miere, at the 
extreme left, you see the Sears building, John Coggan 
had a shop, the first in Boston. In those days, if a 
shopkeeper inchned to elevate the cost of li\"ing, his 
clientele found legal curbs to check his avarice; and 
our friend Keayne, who was a tailor, "fell under the 
censure of court and church for selling his wares at 
exorbitant profits." 

54 



The Old City 

Court street was "Prison Lane," and the old 
prison gloomed where the tall new ofEce-building of 
the municipality has lately risen. In this vicinity, in 
1719, William Brooker, the postmaster, published 
the Boston Gazette and employed James Franklin 
to print it. Afterward, James harked to the buzz 
of the publishing bee and started the New England 
Courant. The buzzing annoyed the authorities, and 
James was enjoined from publishing his paper, so 
he beat the devil about the stump by permitting 
young Benjamin, his brother, to attach his name as 
publisher. This was the third newspaper in Boston, 
1721. 

The "bigger, better and busier" slogan of recent 
years would have been equally appropriate if Ben 
Franklin had thought to apply it to Boston in the 
columns of his paper, for the community was growing 
fast, and, as rebuilding succeeded each sweeping 
conflagration, its architecture and arrangement im- 
proved. The characterization "busier" would have 
been particularly happy. The colonists built houses 
and warehouses, docks, wharves and fortifications, 
laid keels and launched ships, trafficked in the 
commodities of life, talked politics and religion, 
baited governors — in fact, conducted themselves 
much as we do in the matter of hustle and bustle, 
and, considering what they had to do with, accom- 
plished more. 

Regard, as a sample citizen of Provincial days, 

57 



Random Notes of Boston 

Colonel Paul Revere. When you know him a little 
better, you will see that, if lacking Franklin's great- 
ness, he was in many respects not unlike him. Artist, 
poet, printer, inventor, mechanic, soldier and patriot, 
Revere was the Leonardo da Vinci of New England. 
The versatile Leonardo invented the wheelbarrow. 
Revere devised a gun-carriage; Leonardo painted 
the "Last Supper," Revere drew rude but graphic 
caricatures, cartoons of his time, comparable in 
effect, if not in drawing, to those of Nast or Keppler. 
Boston holds one thing against Franklin, namely, 
his quitting it for Philadelphia; Revere stuck to it. 
Franklin shed lustre upon Boston by being born here; 
indeed, if all historians say truly, he doubly honored 
his native town, since he was born once on Hanover 
street, near Marshall's Lane and the Boston Stone, 
and once in a small two-story house on Milk street. 
Revere plausibly parallels this achievement, never- 
theless ; for he twice rode to Lexington, and the first of 
these journeys, though never set to music, was the 
more important. On Sunday, April 16, he visited 
Adams and Hancock at the home of Reverend 
Doctor Clark, reporting what the Sons of Liberty 
had learned about the British intentions. There 
was no doubt that the supplies stored at Concord 
would tempt General Gage, and it remained only to 
warn the countryside of the exact time of the de- 
parture of the troops. This Revere did upon the 
occasion of the famous dash from Charlestown. 

58 



Random Notes of Boston 

William Dawes, stealing out over Boston Neck, 
reached Lexington half an hour behind Revere, and 
together they went on, until halted by a mounted 
British patrol. Dawes got away; so did young 
Prescott, who had ridden with them from Lexington, 
and, being a resident of Concord, knew a little-fre- 
quented woods path, which he followed to safety, 
and was so enabled to warn the people of the im- 
pending invasion. It is fitting not to forget these 
two, particularly since to do so subtracts no credit 
from Revere. 

As a matter of fact, Paul Revere made a specialty 
of the " message-to-Garcia " business. When he had 
anything to do, he did it, and seems to have been 
singularly tongue-tied under conditions that would 
have brought, from most men, protesting questions 
of "why" and "wherefore." His ambition was to 
hold a commission in the Continental army; he had 
to satisfy himself with a militia appointment. When, 
after the Revolution, under the new government. 
Patriotism found it necessary to "do something" 
for poor brother Patronage, Revere would have liked 
a federal appointment. Congressman Ames, to 
whom he applied, rendered him the polite equivalent 
of our latter-day "nothing doing," so the Colonel 
decided that being a sterling patriot was not nearly 
so nourishing as the sordid pursuit of trade. 

Besides the Midnight Ride, Paul Revere made 
good his claim to useful citizenship by many and 

60 



/ 



The Old City 

varied activities and achievements. He made 
copper-plate engravings, drew and engraved at least 
two harbor-front views of Boston, practised den- 
tistry, fitting false teeth " in such a manner that they 
are not only an Ornament, but of real Use in Speaking 
and Eating;'' served the patriot cause as official 
messenger, commanded an artillery train in charge 
of the Castle (now Fort Independence), invented 
a gun-carriage at the request of General Washington, 
imprinted "soldiers' notes," a form of continental 
tender, kept a goldsmith's shop, established a bell- 
foundry, engraved the seal of the Commonwealth, 
manufactured the copper hardware for the frigate 
"Constitution," and the sheathing with which she 
was bottomed; also made many tons of copper 
products for the government, and the sheeting 
which covered the dome of the new State House on 
Beacon Hill ; and he assisted, as Grand Master of the 
Freemasons of Massachusetts, in laying the corner 
stone of that building, July 4, 1795. He lived to be 
eighty-four years old, and, dying, left a fortune of 
$35,000, many examples of worthy craftsmanship, 
an established business, and an honored name. 

Revere's house in North square is today, with 
one possible exception, the oldest standing edifice in 
Boston; it was built in 1676, and was nearly a century 
old when Revere became its .occupant. About North 
square dwelt many of the "best families;" in its 
vicinity were several churches, including the Old 

61 



The Old City 

North. Today it forms a part of the Italian quar- 
ter; is there a future president, think you, playing 
upon its pavement? 

Faneuil Hall was built by Peter Faneuil, at the 
head of the Town Dock, in 1742. Mill Creek, con- 
necting the Town Dock with the Mill Pond, was 
later turned into a canal for the passage of small 
shipping. In 1825 Josiah Quincy built a new 
market, filling in the old dock, and adding vastly 
to the commercial facilities of the city. 

Near the Boston Stone, in Marshall's Lane, 
Ebenezer Hancock, Revolutionary paymaster, dis- 
bursed the gold, loaned by France, for the payment 
of the Continental troops; and in this neighborhood 
Louis Philippe, future king of France, in 1798 gave 
French lessons at the house of James Ambard. 

And so every corner in old Boston has its history 
and its associations. A single chapter can but 
suggest, where here or there an incident teases one's 
imagination or starts the train of reminiscence back- 
tracking along a path as devious as the tangled 
streets themselves. What of Tremont street, King's 
Chapel, and that neighborhood of fine estates on the 
Pemberton slope ? What of the Granary Burying 
Ground, where nine governors sleep, undisturbed 
by the futile clatter of street noises above, or the 
roar of the subway beneath.'^ What of the great 
Mall, the Haymarket, or the sober luxuries of 
Colonnade Row? What of the old slough near 

63 



V. 



WATERFRONT AND HARBOR 

TN his Wonder-working Providence in New England, 
Edward Johnson gives some idea of Boston in 
the first decade of its history. He mentions the two 
fortified eminences at the north and south, Copp's 
and Fort Hills, with the "Great Cove" between; 
the beacon on the third hill, by which he doubtless 
means Beacon Hill, without reference to its three- 
pinnacled summit; the substantial character of the 
wharves, which the early Bostonians were shrewd 
enough to build in the interests of ocean commerce; 
and finally, "the buildings, large and beautiful, some 
fairly set forth with brick, tile, stone and slate, and 
orderly placed with seemly streets, whose continual 
enlargement presageth some sumptuous city." 

We could forgive the slang, but how about the 
brick, tile, stone and slate? Other chroniclers fail 
to mention them, and even as late as 1803 the infre- 
quency of brick buildings was noted by contem- 
porary writers. 

67 



Random Notes of Boston 

The southern fortification mentioned by Johnson 
was the so-called Southern Battery, on the seaward 
side of Fort Hill. This location corresponded to that 
of the present Rowe's wharf, where you take the 
boat to the beach. Fort Hill square is now as flat 
as your hand., but in the old days Fort Hill was a 
fair round knoll, crowned with a pleasant park and 
fine trees. In the eighteenth century' the streets 
running up its sides were bordered with the homes 
of well-to-do citizens. In that section of town 
dwelt, also, many artisans employed in ropewalks 
and shipyards. That they were a huslrv- crew is 
shown by the fact that only two days before the 
Boston Massacre occurred a riotous encounter 
between the "mechanics'" and the British soldiers 
quartered thereabout, in which the townsmen scored 
a boisterous, if not ven* sanguinary' %'ictory. 

At Griffin's wharf, nearby, the three teaships 
lay on December 16, 1773. Here came about a score 
of spurious Indians, followed by a willing crowd of 
excited men and boys, after an indignation meeting 
in the Old South Meeting House. In short order 
they boarded the vessels, siezed the three hundred 
and forty-two chests of tea, and emptied them upon 
the mud and ooze of the harbor-bottom, exposed by 
the ebb tide. Some of the invading party clambered 
down the piling and tramped the tea into the mud, 
as it poured over from the decks. The returning tide 
completed the work. 

68 



Random Notes of Boston 

One of the party, Thomas Melvill, found tea in 
his shoes when he went home. This, sealed in a 
bottle, was kept as a memento of the affair, and is 
in the collection of the Bostonian Society today. 
No one was permitted knowingly to carry tea away, 
and if any tried to do so, he was promptly set upon. 
One such lost his coat-tails, in the pockets of which 
he had hidden a few handfuls of the herb. Next 
day the coat-tails were nailed upon the whipping 
post near their owner's house in Charlestown, with 
an appropriate placard. 

Paul Revere, as you might readily suppose, was 
"among those present" at the Tea Party, and shortly 
afterwards set out on horseback for New York, with 
news of the occurrence, where it occasioned great 
enthusiasm. This was only one of his numerous 
official journeys in that direction. Seemingly, if a 
message needed carrying, someone always cried, 
"Where's Paul.?" 

Another name for the Southern Battery was the 
"Sconce," and from it Sconce lane led up to the 
fort on the hillside. This fort was begun in 1632, but 
the Sconce was the more strongly built and equipped. 
In fact, in 1743, when the Sconce mounted thirty- 
five guns, the fort seems to have disappeared. The 
British occupied this fortification with a garrison of 
four hundred men, and at the Evacuation left it in 
badly damaged condition, but the American forces 
repaired it. 

70 



Random Notes of Boston 

The harbor hne extended irregularly from Fort 
Hill toward the present junction of Kilby and State 
streets, and it would be well to remember the hollow 
conformation of the shore in the early days. Sconce 
lane was afterwards called Hamilton street, and the 
way along the beach the "Battery march," a name 
that has come down to us, and which enables us to 
determine the former beach line with a degree of 
accuracy. 

The indentation of the harbor known as Great 
Cove or Town Cove was divided about equally by 
Long wharf, a solid structure continuing the line of 
King (State) street. From its landward end near 
the present corner of Kilby street, it ran out two 
thousand feet. It was built in 1709-10, and sup- 
ported rows of stores and warehouses. With the 
reclamation of the Cove, Long wharf sacrificed 
most of its length to State street. 

The present shore line from Battery street to 
Rowe's wharf, as defined by Atlantic avenue, cor- 
responds to the old Barricado, a stout defence of logs 
or piles which effectually enclosed the inner harbor. 
At the point where the Barricado cut Long wharf at 
right angles, and on the northern side of the latter, 
was Minott's T, a projection or offshoot of Long 
wharf, and joined to the Barricado as well. Its 
shape gave it the name, which has no reference to the 
Tea Party. By extension and alteration, T wharf 
became an independent jetty, having no connection 

72 



Random Notes of Boston 

with Long wharf. 

When you detrain today at the South station, 
you issue upon a big, crowded plaza, named recently, 
as its title indicates, Dewey square. Turn and look 
back and up at the towering facade, surmounted by 
an enormous clock, usually set two comfortable 
minutes faster than standard time, a white and 
justifiable falsehood. 

Twenty years ago there was no South terminal, 
but incoming travelers were set down at one or 
another of several scattered structures. Today all 
trains entering the city on the south side utilize 
the South station. Until within two or three years 
it was the largest railroad station on earth. Yet it is 
even now scarcely adequate for the traffic passing 
through it. 

Our drawing of Dewey square was made from the 
main entrance of the terminal, and shows a teeming, 
sometimes congested, center of traffic. The elevated, 
of more recent erection than the station itself, 
sweeps past in a long curve, and apprehensive thou- 
sands "duck" timidly when the trains grind roaring 
and shrieking overhead. Several busy streets radiate 
from Dewey square. At morning and evening it 
is traversed by hurrying crowds, and a few souls 
forget the two minutes' grace of the big clock and 
run for trains with un-Bostonian abandon. 

The location of the South station was formerly 
marsh and Atlantic avenue as far as Rowe's wharf 

74 



Waterfront and Harbor 

was built upon low or marshy ground. It is parall- 
eled by the Fort Point channel, which connects the 
harbor with the South bay, an inner basin now 
lined with wharves, coal-pockets and lumber docks. 

Along the "old Barricado," now Atlantic avenue, 
from Rowe's wharf to Battery wharf, a great number 
of docks and quays jut out, with an irregular sug- 
gestion of comb teeth. Long and T wharves are of 
the number given over to the fishing industry. 
Massachusetts surely feeds the nation on Fridays, 
for the fisher-folk of Boston, Gloucester, Province- 
town and lesser ports winnow the deep the year 
around. Sometimes, after a storm at sea, the vessels, 
big and little, that dock along Atlantic avenue come 
in with every spar and strand thickly coated with ice. 
But nothing daunts the "Captains Courageous" of 
the New England fishing fleets. 

From the elevated train you will see the fruit 
company's "banana boats," in from Jamaica, dis- 
charging cargoes for trans-shipment to points inland. 
The bananas come to port green, but before you buy 
them for your own use they will have been ripened in 
dark, warm cellars. Finishing on the tree improves 
an orange, but bananas are better if captured in a 
green, undomesticated state. Occasionally the 
banana boat brings a stowaway, a big, fighting 
tarantula, with a hairy body as large as a half-dollar, 
and a dangerous bite. 

It is said that the battle of Fort Hill, between the 

75 



Waterfront and Harbor 

soldiers and the townsmen, was precipitated by the 
term "lobster," applied to a red-coat, by one of the 
mechanics. Since that day the lobster has become a 
creature of fashion, contributing largely to the high 
cost of livers, but his name finds no greater favor as 
an epithet than when used for the patriotic purpose of 
starting a pre-Revolutionary rumpus. The lobster 
fleet, consisting of many small craft, mostly power 
driven, should interest the gourmet who likes to 
know the origin of his delicacies; to the gourmand, 
we recommend the satisfying qualities of Boston 
baked beans and the New England boiled dinner. 

Across the harbor, bulk the huge masses of ele- 
vator and dock in Charlestown and East Boston. 
Most of the tonnage lying at the wharves of Atlantic 
avenue is coast-wise. But, barring one German line, 
the passenger boats and freighters of the foreign- 
faring trade tie up at the farther shore. East Boston 
is on Noddle Island, a part of the city proper, where 
great manufactures thrive. From it we get electric 
lamps, ships, machinery and immigrants. 

Back of the Charlestown docks rises Bunker Hill. 
The immediate vicinity of Bunker Hill is richer in 
historic association than in pictorial value, which 
explains why it is artistically wise to show the thin 
shaft of the Monument aspiring slenderly in the 
afternoon sun, its tall shape emphasized by contrast 
with the gray of the docks and ships. 

Just beyond Battery street, at Copp's Hill, the 

77 



Random Notes of Boston 

settlers established the North Batterj^ which Edward 
Johnson described as "a very strong battery built 
of whole timber and filled with earth." It is first 
mentioned in the records of 1644. Battery wharf 
perpetuates its name. Major Pitcairn, of the First 
Battahon of Marines, was one of the British ofiicers 
who embarked from the North Battery on the day 
of Bunker Hill, a day upon which he displayed a fatal 
gallantry. He, you will remember, was reported to 
have stirred his grog with his finger at Wright's 
Tavern, Concord, on April 19, stating as he did so, 
that the damned Yankees' blood would be similarly 
"stirred" before night. Vie^v^ng the bravery of his 
death, we may charitably overlook that boast. 

Soon after the settlement of Boston, the colonists 
began to build ships. Oddly enough, the first of these 
was launched on July 4, in the year 1631, at Medford, 
a short distance up the Mystic river. The shipyards 
of Boston were established along the North End 
waterfront, and the shipwrights formed a group, 
powerful in politics, whose opinion was always 
seriously considered. Our term "caucus," applied 
to a pohtical meeting, is said to have sprung from 
the gatherings of "calkers" in the famous old pubhc 
houses of the North End. 

Of the hundreds of vessels built in the palmy 
days of marine construction in Boston, the most 
notable was the frigate Constitution, "Old Iron- 
sides," the pride of the American na\y. Her keel 

78 



Random Notes of Boston 

was laid in Hartt's shipyard, the site of the present 
Constitution wharf. No modern dreadnaught ever 
aroused a fraction of the enthusiasm occasioned by 
her planning and building. On the day set for her 
launching, September 20, 1797, thousands of 
people crowded the neighboring shores and wharves ; 
but when the signal was given, she failed to take 
the water. A second attempt, on the 22nd, proved 
unsuccessful; but on Saturday, October 21, she slid 
down the ways, observed by only a few people, since 
many had declared her "ill-fated," and perhaps 
thought she would never be floated. Her subsequent 
career in the service, and long life, not yet at an end, 
have shown the emptiness of that superstitious fear. 

If the Constitution typified one aspect of the 
Boston spirit, let us consider a modern example of a 
different sort. On any summer day you may see, 
either at anchor in the roadstead, or nosing unob- 
trusively among the shipping, an odd-looking, many- 
windowed craft of the house-boat order, cargoed 
with sick babies and tired mothers. Her daily trips, 
made possible by the generosity of hundreds of men, 
women and children, sometimes expressed in pennies, 
often in an individual contribution sufficient for the 
expense of an entire day, register the throbbing of 
a great heart full of tenderness and pity for the 
helpless. This is the Boston Floating Hospital. 

"Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than 
war." 



B 



VI. 



CAMBRIDGE AND HARVARD COLLEGE 

[Y reason of common ancestry and interest, a 
close kinship unites Cambridge and Boston. 
Blood is thicker than water, even though the water 
constitute a physical barrier between them. Cam- 
bridge shares, and, if possible, intensifies the Boston 
spirit; yet it has its own unique and well defined 
individuality. 

Some uncertainty seems to have persisted in the 
minds of the Puritan founders of Boston as to the 
permanency of their Shawmut location. The slopes 
of Trimount offered a very limited area for agri- 
cultural purposes; the settlers needed elbow room. 
Upon a seven-hundred-acre, tongue of land almost 
completely engirdled by water, the problem of 
growth was serious. On the promontory, geograph- 
ical contour simplified the matter of defence; so, in 
selecting a site for a town further inland, protection 
must be considered, along with the gained advan- 
tages of soil and space. 

83/ 



Random Notes of Boston 

In December, 1630, the settlers decided to begin 
a new town at a spot nearly coincident with the 
present Harvard square, and *'Newtowne" it was 
called for eight years. Here is a contemporary 
account of Newtowne, by William Wood, author of 
New England's Prospect, 1633: 

"This place was first intended for a city, but, 
upon more serious considerations, it was thought not 
so fit, being too far from the sea, being the greatest 
inconvenience it hath. This is one of the neatest 
and best compacted towns in New England, having 
many fair structures, with many handsome con- 
trived streets. The inhabitants, most of them, are 
very rich, and well stored with cattle of all sorts, 
having many hundred acres of land paled in with 
general fence, which is about a mile and a half long, 
which secures all their weaker cattle from the wild 
beasts." 

Many of the Bostonians agreed to establish 
homes in the new fortified town, including Governor 
Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, the deputy governor, 
and the "assistants,'* who constituted the council, or 
legislative aids to the governor. Not all kept this 
promise. Dudley built his house near what is now 
Dunster street, two blocks from the Square. Win- 
throp, however, changed his mind, and though he 
actually built a house in Cambridge, he subsequently 
removed it to his lot on the corner of Milk street 
and old Corn Hill, in Boston. This frame dwelling 

84 



Random Notes of Boston 

was his second Boston residence. The first South 
Meeting House was built beside it, and afterward 
our own Old South, in 1729. When the British 
occupied the church, they pulled the ancient mansion 
to pieces and used it for fuel. 

The "paling," a tall barrier of stout logs, extended 
from the Charles river to the creek that formed 
the north boundary of the town. It crossed the 
land now occupied by the College, on a line passing 
through or near the site of Gore Hall. No assault 
upon the paling is recorded, and as a defence against 
the Indians it need not have been built, since they 
were not of a menacing breed or disposition. 

In his Wonder-Working Providence, Edward 
Johnson, whom we have had previous occasion to 
quote, wrote: 

"When they had scarce houses to shelter them- 
selves and no doores to hinder the Indians access to 

all they had in them yet had they none of 

their food or stuffe diminished, neither children nor 
wives hurt in any measure, although the Indians 
came commonly to them at those times, much 
hungry belly (as they used to say) and were then in 
number and strength beyond the Enghsh by far." 

This friendliness on the part of the aborigines was 
due to the conciliatory attitude of the colonists 
toward them; consider this injunction, which the 
settlers made their rule in dealing with the Indians: 

"If any of the salvages pretend right of inheri- 

86 



Cambridge and Harvard College 

hospital. Later it was occupied by Elbridge Gerry, 
one of the "signers," who became governor, and 
afterwards vice-president. The poet's father ac- 
quired the property at the death of Mr. Gerry. 
The house was built previous to 1760, its name, 
Elmwood, dating back to the days of the elder 
Lowell. 

On a night neither recent nor remote, a Cambridge 
citizen going belatedly home along Garden street, 
encountered the oval iron fence that surrounds the 
Washington Elm. He felt his way around the 
circuit several times, then, terror-stricken, shouted, 
"Help, help, I'm locked in!" 

The old tree still survives the repeated rigors of 
our New England climate, and if the new forestry 
avail, may live indefinitely. But it has lost much of 
the spreading canopy under which Washington took 
command of the American army in 1775. It shares 
with the Craigie homestead the honor of having 
sheltered the great Commander. This was originally 
the estate of a rich Tory, Colonel John Vassall. 
General Washington took possession of the house 
in July, 1775, and chose for his personal use the 
southeast chamber, where afterward Henry Wads- 
worth Longfellow lived and worked. The poet 
himself guided many a visitor through the historic 
rooms, answering questions with gentle courtesy. 

No American city has association with events 
of greater moment in our history than has Cam- 

91 



Random Notes of Boston 

bridge. Six men of Cambridge fell in the battle 
of Lexington. It was for many months the head- 
quarters of the Revolution, and its citizens have 
helped shape the destiny of the nation. And in that 
golden generation of American letters just passed, 
the Cambridge immortals shared gloriously in laying 
the deep foundations of our national literature. 

"Amid these fragments of heroic days, 
When thought met deed with mutual passion's 

leap, 
There sits a fame whose silent trump makes 

cheap 
What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise. 
They had far other estimate of praise 
Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep 
In art and action, and whose memories keep 
Their height like stars above our misty ways." 

James Russell Lowell. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

The writer desires to express his obligation to 
Mr. Charles F. Read, of the Bostonian Society, for 
many courtesies, and for the privilege of access to 
the Society's library in the Old State House. 

The following books have been especially useful: 

Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, by 
Samuel Adams Drake. Boston; Little, Brown & Co., 1906. 

Historic Mansions and Highways Around Boston, by 
Samuel Adams Drake. Boston; Little, Brown & Co., 1899. 

Rambles in Old Boston, by E. G. Porter. Boston; Cupples, 
Upham & Co., 1887. 

Life of Phillips Brooks, by Alexander V. G. Allen. New 
York; E. P. Dutton & Company, 1900. 

The True Story of Paul Revere, by Charles Ferris Gettemy. 
Boston; Little, Brown & Company, 1906. 

The Life of Paul Revere, by Elbridge Henry Goss. Boston; 
George Cupples, 1891. 

John Hancock, by Lorenzo Sears. Boston; Little, Brown 
& Company, 1912. 

History of the Old South Church, by Hamilton Andrews 
Hill. Boston; Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890. 

History of the National Peace Jubilee, by P. S. Gilmore. 
Boston; 1871. 

The Public Library of the City of Boston, by Horace G. 
Wadlin. Boston; 1911. 

History of Cambridge, by Lucius R. Paige. Boston; H. O. 
Houghton & Co., 1877. 

Boston, A Guide Book, by Edwin M. Bacon. Boston; Ginn 
& Company, 1903. 



OCT 2 1918 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



iilmi ill 

014 076 870 4 



